Despite gains made in many parts of the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people are, in some regions, increasingly persecuted and denied basic human rights. Because bigotry thrives where we are silenced by fear, we've created this space for people to share stories of discrimination and survival. Read these stories, share them, and contribute your own. Let the world know that we will not be silent.
“i grew up in a masculine household, and have memories of being called ‘fag’ and ‘queer’ because i chose dance and music over sports, and my ultraconservative mom saying gay sex was disgusting. It was only natural that i thought i could suppress the smaller, gay in me, replace it with fear and hate”
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“It’s really hard to explaine what i’m going through, i’m gay i’m proud but my town hates me they bully me, hit me , harrasse me and throw rocks at me , i’ve tried to hide it , bUt my vOice , my talk , my walk and the way i am is telling !”
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“I confided in one of my friends that im actually not straight. …in a space of 3hrs…the news was viral……I got hate texts,mockery videos,she got everyone to turn against me…my family found out……I got a breif weekend break from volunteering went home….they tried to an exorcism.”
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“about 6 or 7 years ago, a friend and I were walking along a street, laughing out loud and somehow, a guy started to shout ‘faggot !’ indefinetely on the other side of the street. Sheer provocation : I couldn’t stand here and smile stupidly because I thought at first that he wasn’t talking to me ; so I said the guy to shut up… He crossed the street, pacing in my direction, pushed me and swore my death the next time he’d see me. Sadly “classic”, this story wouldn’t get out of my mind, even though I had to do if everything was normal the rest of the day, not only to my friends, but also to my family.”
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“They used to throw paper balls at me, mess with my things, call me faggot. once they set fire under my chair during the class and the next day a guy put I nife on my neck make sure I would never tell anybody who did that to me.”
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“I told the policeman what happened. He asked me: ‘Are you a woman?’ I told him: ‘Yes I am.’ He didn’t take my statement. Instead he went to other police and I heard him laughing. The other police also came to ask me what had happened. I later found out they were making fun of me. I went home, wearing one shoe, and feeling very devastated. I never believed that the institutions I trusted could do this to me. I arrived at home and went straight to bed without a statement being taken.”
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Watch this TEDx talk in which Robin Hammond shares stories of discrimination and survival; stories that matter from where love is illegal. Stories that need to be heard.
“Maybe, just maybe, we can create a future world where no one needs to cover their face, change their name, hide who they are. A future world where everyone’s story matters. A future world in which love is never illegal.”
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“I’m 15 and I’m gay , I’m from morocco , I still haven’t come out to my family yet , only to a couple of friends , being gay in here is a sin , a crime , and a shame bringer”
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“even if i wanted to be out and proud, who would listen? especially to someone who is a racial minority with mental health issues? I can’t wait to get out of here, to be free to be me again.”
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“When I witness the progress in places such as North America and Europe, I further realize how lonely and isolated I am at times to the point it becomes unbearable. I am at an age where I want to express my sexuality, find companionship, a lover, a partner. I don’t know what the future holds for me living here. Sometimes I wonder if this is just my burden to bare. Maybe one day in the afterlife if exists, I will finally be able live without fear.”
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“I’m a muslim guy born in a Turkish family. I came out for my homosexuality when I was 15. For my family this was not ok. So I moved by my own at my 17 without nothing. Now 12 years later I’m very strong and powerful.”
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“Time came that I need to tell the truth to them, I was so scared of what might be the consequences of my confession. Before I went to college I confessed to them about who I really am but I was beaten by some of them, they were disgusted and even cursed me and since that day they started avoiding me.”
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“Last year, I tried to kill myself. I felt so trapped and stuck, like nothing would ever get better. I felt like there was something was wrong with me but realized it was something wrong with society. I was certain the society was never going to change. No one knew who I was. I was living a lie. My parents are still trying to figure out why I did it. If only, they knew.”
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“I have been tortured several times by homophobic people and police officers… I can’t forget when I was raped in the police cell by prisoners, after all that I decided to start an organization with some campus students. I also appeared in local newspapers as a promoter of homosexuals so right now it’s hard for me to get a safe place to rent yet I am not working. I was fired from work because I am gay.”
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“Just want someone to come and take me out of this situation someday. I dont need all the luxury or money or the job that I have, I need love and freedom to be myself and want to surround myself with happy people.”
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“At that moment the sense of sin/guilt and social exclusion collaborated to go into depression. Every day, before bed, in my prayers asking for God to take away my own life if I were to continue living fighting myself because I had fought all the ways to not be so.”
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“I can’t describe the feelng of fear and violation when someone shows you torn pages of your most secret thoughts after you deny them.”
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“The thing that has always kept me strong in every decision I’ve made in my life is pursuing my own happiness, understanding that I don’t need to deny what I am or try to maintain an appearance of what I’m not before anyone and by no means in front of my parents.”
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“I dated women for 7 years, even to the point of having a fiancée, just to make him happy. It’s taken all my being to keep trying to salvage whatever love might be harvested deep down inside him. I still hope one day he comes around, but for now, I am stuck with some more bills and memories of the man who drove me home the last day he thought I was worth loving.”
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“When I was 15, I heard that I was ‘a shitty lesbo’ and was raped BY A CLASSMATE to ‘learn to be a proper girl.’ I didn’t go back to school after that day.”
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“We heard people stoning the door and windows while shouting, telling us to immediately leave the house because they were tired of us, claiming that we are curse to the village, and even to the teenagers in the village… After a while of storming the door, it broke and we were pulled out, thrown on the ground, beaten and flogged for almost an hour. We were half dead.”
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“love is all about chioices, not gender, and i really want international community can do something to let china openly and optimistically discuss gay rights issue with lgbt people instead of a bunch of government officials who didn’t even want to talk about it.”
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“When I was 11 and about to finish primary school, a girl told everybody to not talk to me because I was weird and she believed I liked boys. I guess I sometimes showed a part of me that I didn’t even know at the time so it was shocking, I couldn’t accept that.”
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“i cowered, i was afraid that she would consider me one of lgbti, even though i was and being one of them was never a fault. i was such a coward, i did not have courage to face the judgement brought by the exposure of me sexual orientation. and my grandma’s reaction just made me feel like i was making a huge mistake. but fortunately i held on.”
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“fear was a huge part of growing up in my small midwestern town where the word ‘gay’ was synonymous with: abnormal, disgusting, diseased, evil, & poisonous. when he found out, my step-father put me in therapy to fix my ‘faggot phase’ and refused to call me by anything other than ‘faggot’ or ‘little shit’.”
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“Cameroonian mother and a Congolese stepfather my parents divorced when I was three and grew up with my catholic mother african Culture and catholism together is the worSt comBination when that you grow up you know you like men also. Years have passed while growing up I was beaten because i had certain tendencies that a boy was not meant to have”
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“When I was a young kid, I had my own hobbies different to the rest of the kids, and some of them called me gay in a bad way like ‘fag’. During my puberty some of them too, because my interests were different. i came out with my friends this year, and i was surprised about how gentle and fine they were with me. this has been a complicated topic in my life, since i knew who i was. but my friends always treated me with respect and love.”
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“I saw all of my peers and friends got there own life married. … children … most of them even the gays ones and I was somehow like am totally wrong and too many question marks about me …. I felt alone … I feared the future … I feared to be old all alone here outcasted who has nothing. … so I met a girl.”
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“The guy who I was holding hands with stood up to defend us and received a beating in exchange. It was five guys who beat us up, including my own brother. When I realized things had gotten out of control, I kneeled before my brother and begged him to stop. Upon his refusal, I decided to run to the car I used to go to the university and flee. When I finally had the courage to return to my parent’s home, two days later, I confronted my parents by telling them what happened and hoping that they would do what was right.”
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“I am an only child and my family had always told me to ‘prosper and populate the family’. When I realized I was gay, I wished I had not been born. After my only gay friend actually committed suicide (I never forget that day), I became motivated to save the lives of gay people and, to be honest, myself. Finally, against my friends’ advice, I came out to my parents. They were devastated at first but gradually became supportive and suggested that I move to a place where gays are more accepted, somewhere I could raise kids in a committed relationship.”
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“It was a rare day if ‘Homo’, ‘faggot’ or ‘gay’ was not shouted at me, living in a small village meant That i Had deal with small minded people. Being 12 years old and constantly Being Told you were ‘gay’ was a weird thing.”
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“In Ghana if you’re gay then you’re deemed an abomination, sick and preverited and most of the time I’m church when the preacher speaks on the subject it’s always the same THING ‘if you are gay then you’re going to hell’ because of this I can’t even go to church cause EVERYTIME I enter the house god I feel ashamed but I still pray cause in my heart I know that god still loves me no matter what.”
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“I had a conversation with the director of the school, during which it was made clear to me that I must accept her conditions: disappear from all LGBT groups; stop putting any similar information on my wall; and not participate in discussions on the subject… That is to say, ‘make a choice, what is more important to you – being a teacher, or your activist views.’ Just the chance to accept these conditions put me into a two day depression of looking at myself in the mirror with constant abhorrence. In essence, it meant the betrayal of myself, and everything I believe in.”
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“I’m gay and proud of it. There’s nothing that I would change about myself. But my country and my parents would never agree to that. Where homosexuality is a crime. In India and on the other hand if do tell my parents about me, especially my dad, he’ll kill me. No doubts.”
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“There were 60 people in our town- about 15 of those were kids. On reflection the hardest thing growing up gay was how it made Fletch feel, having an older gay brother, knowing how much he was judged and I think how mad that it may have made him for him to come to terms with his own sense of self.”
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“I came out to my closest friends when I was 14, and my parents turned out to discover when I was 15, and since that my life has been really hard. My dad accepts me but my mom doesn’t. She moved me away from my school and friends, she doesn’t let me go alone anywhere, and tells me I’m the shame of the family.”
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“My mother calls me gay when she wants to tell me that i am sick, and then after it she asks if i am ill or if there is something wrong with me, as if her remark on me being gay is not enough emphasis for her that i am -in her opinion- sick and got something wrong going on in me.”
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“they judged it was time to take the next step which was to burn me alive in big trucks wheels that were in this intersection, no sooner said than done, that’s when I found myself in these wheels naked, they removed the fuel from a motorcycle and poured it on me.”
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“I went to an all boys grammar school, where the words ‘gay’ and ‘faggot’ were often thrown around. I felt the need to hide and ‘stay in the closest’ because being openly gay was not socially acceptable there. I didn’t want to give the bullies another reason to harass me, because they already bullied me for the colour of my skin, my demeanour and my feminine voice.”
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“I started to involve as a sex worker initially just for fun, then i get serious and working full time. At first everything is fascinating, i get so many customers and my life was quite luxurious.
I always go shopping and fulfill my every needs. At that time life is so perfect but ‘the sky is not always bright’.”
“The most difficult was for my brothers, one of them beat me, he deformed my face. We stop to talk during one year and half. After that he apologized for being a monster and what he wants is my happiness, doesn’t matter if you’re gay or not. I want your happiness because you’re my brother.”
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“The contemporary Chinese youth are very open, but the elder are conservative very much, they will feel disgusting and strange if he see gay people, my family are like kind of this espeically. Once upon a time, my mum asked me why I love Lady Gaga, why I love the gay people? I told her the gay is nothing, they are just like normal people, a people to find his true love, is anything wrong? She got very angry, she thought my point of view and attitude are wrong absolutely, she said love is built on the physiology!”
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“When I hear those hate words that homophobic people keep saying about gay people, I really get angry because it feels indirectly that they are saying or referring to me coz I am one of those gay people they are hating on.”
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“I BORN UNLUCKY….. I had good childhood until I was sexual assaulted by my uncle in the age where I don’t even no the meaning gay barbie girlie it was my pet name nobody’s thought why I am like this, whether its my mistake or gods.”
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“I thought she’s my best friend she would understand, when I came out to her at the age of 13 she said that I am sick and I need to go to hell, she never spoke to me ever again and eventually I lost all my friends and my depression grew depper and depper at the age of 14 I tried to commit suicide.”
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“At the race briefing I pulled the race coordinator aside and asked her if there would be a problem with the club shirt I planned on wearing on race day. I told her I was representing a lesbian running club. The concerned look on her face said it all.”
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“Things worsened when my face appeared in newspaper on the front page. I started receiving phone calls threatening me from different corners that they are going to kill me and my land lord threw me out that he doesn’t entertain gay people. I became a security threat to my friends and to my organization where I work from.”
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“despite the beatings and insults and the humiliating and hard words and despite being deprived of my most basic rights for almost 3 months… I would not give up because I knew I was right… breathing in the free air and crying both from happiness/relief and sadness. I thanked God and prayed and stood there staring at the sea until it was time to escape from Syria.”
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“I don’t want to write about my story because it bothers me a lot, it is exhausting me and makes me cry.”
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“I grew up in a series of small military towns. I came out at 11 years old. By the time I turned 19 I lost three friends to LGBT related hate violence. My story is the unconventional casualty of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. In the mid 90s the military was a culture of fear for LGBT service members, but many people don’t realize the DADT culture of fear was also handed down to the LGBT family members of service people. I was the oldest daughter of a teenage mother. My family had no idea what to do with a prepubescent queer kid.”
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